by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta be dirty enough to do it. The gloriously rude and obtuse sounds of baile funk have, in the last year or two, eclipsed Brazil’s myriad more nuanced styles—MPB, samba, tropicalia and so forth—among North Americans and Europeans hungry for hot jams from abroad. And now baile funk has more than just mixtapes and downloads to represent itself internationally. The trio Bonde do Role (“the Rollercoaster Band”) are the first to go wide with live shows up here, making them de facto ambassadors.

The pressure’s even greater when you recognize that baile funk is a quintessentially Carioca sound, straight outta the hillside favela slums of Rio de Janeiro, while Bonde do Role’s Pedro D’eyrot, Rodrigo Gorky and Marina Ribatski are from the comparably quiet and classy burg Curitiba. “We try to make people have a good time during our gigs and not screw things up,” the three say collectively in an e-mail interview, “because it’s a lot of responsibility to do this.”

Food fuckers

Bonde do Role bear two standards at once, for baile funk and for Mad Decent, the new record label created by Ninja Tune signee Diplo. As the guy who effectively broke baile funk outside of Brazil, Diplo’s well qualified to further expand its reach, and he’s chosen Bonde do Role’s ass-kicking EP Melo do Tabaco as his debut showcase item (his remix of the title track closes out the record).

“I just heard about them from another DJ in Brazil,” Diplo recalls. “I thought ‘Melo do Tabaco’ was genius. It was the kinda stuff I wanted to make as well in Brazil. They’re just really good kids, and positive, and keep being as mad and loud as possible. It’s great. Like growin’ up—I was in Florida. It was just metalheads and Miami bass freaks, but basically, they were the same kids. Everyone had an obsession with bass and being loud. That’s what Bonde has.”

That, and a very apparent wit and insight, absent in most of their baile funk peers. They’ve got book-learnin’ and backgrounds in riot grrrl and indie pop acts, so grimy, substance-addled slum urchins they aren’t. But don’t break out the Portuguese-English dictionary in hopes of unearthing anything more sophisticated than baile funk’s usual litanies on sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll in the band’s raps. “They’re mostly about things that are funny, at least for us,” Bonde do Role explain, “like sex, hookers, more sex—this time with other elements, like food—and stuff like that. In other words, it really doesn’t matter if you understand them or not.”

Ample samples

Also in proper baile funk style, the Melo do Tabaco EP is chock full of shit stolen from all over—Alice in Chains, Henry Mancini, Manfred Mann, Kraftwerk, Prince, you name it. “Yeah, for the new [forthcoming full-length] record, we recorded all our guitars, to avoid problems with copyrights. But back when we used samples, it was all about a good laugh and to see which rock band we’d sample, to get their fans pissed!”

All in good fun, of course, but for newbie label honcho Diplo, already busy enough with other forthcoming Mad Decent products—South Rakkas Crew, DJ Blaqstarr and a baile funk documentary DVD he produced himself—the sampling frenzy can only add up to legal headaches.

“Yeah, well,” Diplo notes snarkily, “I can still put out mixtapes, right? But for Bonde, we are trying to make original music for [the full-length] release. Once I can afford a lawyer, we will try to do some roots funk stuff with no-holds-barred, crazy sample use.

“That’s also one thing that attracted me to funk so early on. It was like hip hop in its early days. Kids are so poor, but all you need to do is buy a cheap computer and bootleg programs—and use samples. Fuck buyin’ a guitar. That’s what I like about it, yeah. It’s the most immediate music and the maddest thing happening nowadays. There’s no industry or money or releases. It’s just parties and DJs trading music.”

Diplo, Bonde do Role and CSS are at la Sala Rossa on Saturday, July 15, 9 p.m., $20

>> Music Listings